Verbal information dispensed from physicians and pharmacists is often easy to forget, and patients often misplace, or find it difficult to understand written materials.
Efforts to automate the dispensing of medication information have included the use of 900 numbers for ordering printed drug information, or for conferencing with a live person for obtaining answers to specific inquiries. Medication information software has also been developed which can respond to the spelling of medication names with textual information.
Individual drug companies have additionally created telephony systems which receive requests for information for specific drugs. Such systems are generally limited to providing highly technical reports for practitioners about medications from a specific manufacturer.
While current efforts to automate the medication information process have had some limited success, there is a present need for a more comprehensive system for communicating important information relating to side effects, usage and general information for medications of every sort, independent of the specific manufacturer. There also remains a need for an interactive medication information system which provides immediate, on-demand answers to important questions of users at a level easily understood by the lay user and that is simple to use.